Vipers Beat Back Pesky Lumber Kings:

This is in the Edmonton Sun Newspaper:

Vipers beat back pesky Lumber Kings

By Con Griwkowsky ,Edmonton Sun

First posted: Thursday, May 5, 2011

CAMROSE - With that loss, Pembroke clinches a playoff spot.

The Vernon Vipers continued to be unbeatable after a 5-3 win over the Pembroke Lumber Kings.

On goal differential ratio, Pembroke finishes in third place and will face the hometown Camrose Kodiaks in Saturday’s 6 p.m. RBC Cup semifinal.

Meanwhile, Vernon takes on the Wellington Dukes Saturday at 2 p.m.

Pembroke, Wellington and Portage all finished with 1-3 records and Portage finished odd-team out after the third tiebreaking procedure was applied.

“We came into this game with the prospect that we may be going home,” said Pembroke coach Sheldon Keefe. “We played this game with a sense of desperation. For the most part, we played like we wanted to continue on.”

After Vernon went ahead 2-0 on first-period goals by Patrick McGillis and Colton Sparrow, Pembroke showed some signs of life.

Goals by Jonathan Miller and Brandon Gagne 18 seconds apart pulled them even. Then, Will Seeber gave Pembroke a 3-2 lead a little more than three minutes into the second.

That’s when Vernon head coach Mark Ferner called a time out.

“When you let your guard down and let in three goals in three minutes, certainly they heard about it,” said Ferner, who continued to blast his players during the second-period break. “It’s nice to get a victory and hopefully, we’ll learn from that. You can’t let your guard down, you can’t fall asleep on any shift.”

John Knisher and David Robinson capped off a wild five-goal second period to give Vernon a 4-3 lead after 40 minutes.

Dylan Walchuk added the insurance goal.

“You go to the net pretty hard and sometimes you can bang in those greasy ones,” said Robinson, the Vernon kid who scored the Doyle Cup series winner and whose game-winner Thursday night kept his team’s record intact. “We got away from the simple things that make us succesful.”

But, after the time out, they flexed their muscles again.